Thursday, April 02, 2015

WHEN LAST WE LEFT OUR HEROES...

I'd like to forget about Indiana, but it keeps exponentiating stupidity like some kind of Moron Collider. Some jerks menaced an anti-gay-marriage pizzeria, and the brethren declared this the fault of the reporter who revealed they were anti-gay-marriage. PJ Media's Scott Ott claimed the reporter "fabricated" the story "out of nothing" (that is, she accurately reported what the pizza people said); then people started menacing the reporter.

By the way, does anyone here approve of pizza shops getting death threats? I didn't think so. I suppose if you really did, you'd have adopted the successful gamergate model and I'd be hearing how the threats were just satire. But the big story in rightwing circles is that you, me and Ted Kennedy have the pizzeria pinned down with Kalashnikovs.

"The left doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as they get what they want," raved Ott. "Leftists use Gay people as blunt instruments to hammer only Christens," agreed Samuel Gonzalez at Right Wing News. "They don’t have the guts to go after Muslims who literally throw Homosexuals off roofs in the Middle East." (I don't normally bother to say this, but all rightblogger spellings/capitalizations are verbatim.) And of course the Daily Caller's resident drama queen Jim Treacher cranks it to eleven:

The social-justice bullies of the modern left got what they wanted. Gay marriage is legal in Indiana. But that’s not enough. Nothing will ever be enough, because they need to think of themselves as victims.

That last line must be some sort of inside joke.

...Exit question for gay-marriage enthusiasts: If you’re so sure you’re right, if your stance is so strong, why do you feel the need to destroy anybody who so much as dissents from it?

Why do I what? I don't remember calling in a death threat to the pizza parlor -- but Treacher's not talking to me or you, he's declaiming to the galleries as he plays the lead in The Tragedy of the Victims of Big Gay, and hams it way up. That's what all these guys are doing. If they can get enough people to buy their martyr act, they seem to hope, they might get them to think American Christians are actually being ground under the heel of homosexuals. It's win-whine!

The bad news, for those of us on the suddenly victorious side of the gay marriage debate, is that too many people are acting like sore winners, not merely content with the revolutionary step of removing state discrimination against same-sex couples in the legal recognition of marriage, but seeking to use state power to punish anyone who refuses to lend their business services to wedding ceremonies they find objectionable. That's not persuasion, that's force, and force tends to be the anti-persuasion among those who are on the receiving end of it.

Like Title II of the Civil Rights Act. Well, I expect they'll get rid of that soon enough. (Welch quotes Rod Dreher in support of his argument, which is just perfect.)

And true to form, the homophobic pizza shop owners have used the victimization narrative to their advantage and turned the whole thing into a grift, so far raising almost $200K from rightwing idiots.

I'm putting up a gofundme page about how our governor's backpedaling on the whole freedom to discriminate law has killed my opportunity to open NoHomo Pies and with it, any chance for a successful grift. Will post link to the page here later.

What's the money actually for? I've considered using GoFundMe in the past, but I didn't because I wasn't sure I could justify what I was doing as charitable. Don't you have to have a specific purpose in mind to raise money like that, or am I just dead wrong?

Well if we liberals are the real intolerant jackasses for not eating at anti-gay wingnut pizza places, then I can assume these Christians patron all sorts of gay bars and liberal eateries, since they are the truly tolerant

IIRC, the GFM thing was started by an unconnected party. It'll be interesting - not to mention entertaining and probably instructive - to see how much the Victims of Big Gay actually receive when this all shakes out.

Dreher spent the day nailing himself to a cross and crying crucifixion.

Here’s what any traditional Christian business owner or employee with a brain in his or her head must do now: keep your mouth shut.

Do not talk to the media. You will almost certainly not get a fair shake, and even if you do, it’s not going to matter. The SJW mob will do what it can to destroy you. Do not talk to anybody about your thoughts or opinions unless you know you can trust them not to out you.

Never, ever deny your faith, but do not give them any more information than you absolutely have to. It can and will be used against you. Unless you are already out, stay in the closet. This is where we are in this country. You think I’m exaggerating? You think I’m being alarmist? Ask the O’Connor family of Memories Pizza how quickly your livelihood can be taken from you in the cause of Social Justice™.

If you have a better idea, let’s hear it.

This may not be the America the gay rights movement and its allies, especially in the media, wanted. But this is the America they have created. And it’s just starting.http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/into-the-christian-closet/

The worst thing that could happen to a conservative is that they would be treated as they badly as they treat others--even if it's just in their minds.

Shorter Matt Welch: I thought this gay marriage thing was just a fashion statement to differentiate me from the uncool wingers. There are people here who actually care about the gays? Fuck fuck fuck, how do I change course?

Rod's not nearly as much fub (or fun) as his commenters: Lost in all of this is the very targeted and non accidental targeting of bakers by secular liberals. For centuries bakers have had a hallowed bond with many of the worlds faith traditions. From the sacred hallah to the hostia or sacramental bread, this attack is meant to drive a wedge between community and the baker and is symbolic of the larger cultural battle lines.May be a joke, but just 'cause it's silly isn't a guarantee .

And as for persuasion- I don't think for a fraction of a second we can talk the bigots into not being bigots. They're pretty fucking attached to it. What I do think is that we can and will make them act civilized, and if that makes me a statist interloper then oh the fuck no.

For the record, friends among the Brethren, I don't approve of this kind of shitty behavior. There are plenty of petty liberal jerks who've decided to troll online storefronts and comment sections in a sad attempt at "activism," and I'd just as soon they knock it the fuck off. It's lazy, it helps no one, and - on a more cynical level - it's bad optics.

It's also not oppression, or a lynching, or Kristallnacht, or whatever other histrionic simile you choose to employ. Yes, I know, We Are All Solzhenitsyn Now because mean trolly liberals make fun of you on Twitter or leave spiteful one-star ratings on Yelp or Amazon. I'd maybe take that a little more serious if you pricks had been a little more sympathetic when Anita Sarkeesian was getting regular death threats, but back then it was "only Twitter."

So yes, those people are shitheads, but none of them actually fouled you. Quit grabbing your shin and play the game legit.

As a general rule, I'm not particularly given to schadenfreude. But I've got to fess up and say how much pleasure I've had watching Mollie Hemingway's head explode in real time on Twitter. It's been non-stop "they want to throw us to the lions" for about four days now. On Tuesday night one of her tweets was simply "Lord, have mercy" repeated three times. I'd call it manufactured hysteria, except I think she really believes it.

As a point of contrast, at my social service job I work with several Christians who are really lovely, dedicated people. They care about the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged, and people of all stripes. Not too surprisingly, none of them consider cake baking or flower arranging to be bedrock tenets of their faith.

"Traditional Christian." Just once, I would like to see someone in Our Wonderful Newsmedia challenge the notion behind this - that only conservative Republican evangelicals/fundamentalists count, or that "moral issues" consist solely of what you do with your dick. I've studied world religions, mind, and the history of Christendom is far too complex to reduce it to "queers and sluts give me a sad." Hell, just the last fifty years of evangelism are more complicated than that.

You want to be "traditional" and "moral", Rod? Quit obsessing over the gays and try to shut down some payday loan lenders.

Sounds like you're seeing an in-person example of the shift in the evangelical movement. From the 80's on, the movement was held in thrall to gatekeepers who decided what evangelicals should think and how they should vote. But over the last few years, a lot of evangelicals - especially younger ones - have been moving away from the culture war shit and back into the general social service that defined the movement prior to the rise of the Religious Right. The gatekeepers have responded by freaking the fuck out.

Has anyone else noticed that the modern conservative movement has started applying the same rhetorical tone to "social justice" that normal people typically reserve for "smegma" or "eighteenth-century eye surgery"?

I had sacred hallah french toast last weekend -- yum! As for the sacramental bread used in every Catholic church I've ever attended, it's a little disc with the consistency of packing foam, clearly baked by the million with all the hallowed love a 40-ton extruding-and-stamping machine can muster.

The bad news, for those of us on the suddenly victorious side of the gay marriage debate"Us"? "Us"? Hey, Welch, do you know if there's a disruptive app for ordering you a steaming container of Shut the Fuck Up?

Remarkable. A few years back, I remember a video game website using a similar service to raise money to send some people to E3, and they ended up getting trouble because that wasn't even in the neighborhood of charity. Nice to see that at least one service has opted for the "Eh, fuck it" model to digital growth.

If you’re so sure you’re right, if your stance is so strong, why do you feel the need to destroy anybody who so much as dissents from it?[SINGING] On Christ the solid rock I stand;My beliefs must not be challenged or questioned in even the slightest way

... Did I miss a memo, by the way? Is the word "projection" being discontinued, and these guys are trying to make absolutely sure everyone has a chance to use their supply up? Because Holy Macaroni Fuck, it's gone exponential.

Bigots gonna bigot. Some fraction of the US is going to behave terribly in reaction to any event, on every platform they can employ, to every target they can identify and reach. I will not for one second minimize a death threat or other harassment, online or off. The internet magnifies outrage and all too often lets people unload abuse by the truckload with little accountability.

On the other hand, the simple way to avoid this abuse is to not discriminate. If the gay marriage-torium asks for a 100 pizzas for a small town Indiana gay marriage-a-polooza, bake them, send them over with a nice card, and the customary bajillion percent markup vendors add to anything in the same ZIP code as a wedding. If they feel guilty, they can donate the money to the reactionary church of their choice.

A pizza restaurant, baking pizzas for a gay wedding is not the same as helping to build the big gay death star. No one is going to blow up big gay with a single, improbably accurate missile to a narratively convenient weak spot which will kill millions of hard working small businesspeople too unconcerned by the big gay empire to turn down paying work.

This is kind of a tempest in a teapot, in that the reporter went looking for a quotable bigot , found one and quoted them, which triggered an all too predictable outpouring of condemnation from leftists and liberals looking for the easy online win and a similar outpouring of support from fellow minded reactionaries. If they are media savvy they can turn this into years of right wing grifting just like Sam "Joe" "the" "Plumber" Wurzelbacher did after his moment in the spotlight.

Indiana's RFRA is indeed a problem. Everyone has been talking about how it will affect LGBT folks, but it's not limited to them. It's designed to override non-discrimination laws, never mind what comes out of Pence's steaming piehole. A bigot with big enough balls would be able to use it against Jews (Christ-killers) or blacks (mark of Cain!) or immodestly dressed women (Your Honor, she was wearing a short skirt and she wasn't accompanied by an adult male member of her household--that's how I knew she was a prostitute.).

It is certainly an indication of how well Dreher has internalised the GamerGaters' world-view, when he not only accepts their 'SJW' term for the people they victimise, but accepts that they must have been the ones using the GamerGaters' tactics.

It is as if someone fuckweasel wrote an insanely vicious libellous book about him, and he blamed it on the Elders of Zion.

Absolutely. Let 'em be fucking bigoted all they like, as long as they follow the goddamn law. You could open a bakery called the "God Damn I Wish I Could Refuse Service To A Protected Class Of People Bakery", and play nothing but "Homos Go To Hell" by Someone Who Wrote A Song Called Homos Go To Hell, and that's all fine. You're just not allowed to actually refuse service to a protected class of people.

Hundreds of years of common law that says if you set up to do business with the public, you do business with all the public. Then came the black codes that said you don't have to serve them cause their color ain't right. So now they want special laws to exempt them from serving another group they think are just icky.

However, they never see it as a special kind of privilege, just for them.

Never, ever deny your faith, but do not give them any more information than you absolutely have to. It can and will be used against you. Unless you are already out, stay in the closet. This is where we are in this country.

Sweet! So all the homosexuals in America were able to not only escape their own closets, but managed to wrangle up the homophobes and force them into the closet. Great. I hope there was some sort of fuzzy handcuffs and leather involved during the trapping just for added insult. One can dream.

not quite sure where you're getting the indignation from; the service is helping me out immensely, in a seriously ugly moment, just thought I would share that as part of a conversation…and no I didn't think for a moment you were talking about me. Should I care?

seeking to use state power to punish anyone who refuses to lend their business services to wedding ceremonies they find objectionable. That's not persuasion, that's force,Yes, sometimes the state insists that businesspeople who offer a service must then fulfill their contract, rather than renege. Do libertarians have no idea what happens to economies when contracts are not enforced?

not merely content with the revolutionary step of removing state discrimination against same-sex couples in the legal recognition of marriage, but seeking to use state power to punish anyone who refuses to lend their business services to wedding ceremonies they find objectionable.

Is it really that difficult to understand that "removing state discrimination" includes not denying the protection of the state to people on the basis of their sexual orientation?

I'm really tired of business owners who believe that they have no obligation to the society in which they operate. Business owners have to apply for a license to operate. That license signals the permission of the community to engage in business within that community. As such, the State has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination against members of the community by business owners. That's the way we do things in America, because we find that it is the best way to protect the interests of the community. There was a time when a businessman could roll into town with his little wagon and sell bull semen mixed with sugar water and petroleum and call it medicine. I suppose that's the Libertarian paradise Matt Welch longs to recover.

There was a time when a businessman could roll into town with his little wagon and sell bull semen mixed with sugar water and petroleum and call it medicine. I suppose that's the Libertarian paradise Matt Welch longs to recover.

On a more serious note, you are of course quite right. Spite is their weapon, one of the Trinity of Ronaldus Maximus (although with Hate and Fear - the father, the son, and the Holy Shit! you kidding me?). They are having to make hurt fee-fees from whole cloth, and jeez do they look pitiful. Heard Ed Whelan on Diane Rhem today, and I encourage his wide distribution because he was the biggest, the most collosal WATB this side of Goldberg spawnage. "The gays are winning the culture war!! But we won't go quitely into that dark night! "(seriously I'm not far from quotes here people) "the REAL salt-of-the-earth Amurikins will stand together"... etc. etc. etc.

Once again, these morons post this crap like lazy high school students trying to bullshit their way through an essay test. Does anyone with an ounce of honesty and a gram of intelligence believe that "this attack" is about pizza crust and the "community"? Of course not. It's Johnny Douchebag making a stupid point with a fancy vocab because he didn't do the reading.

social justice warrior predates GamerGate and describes a subset of tumblr users who compete with each other to see who can be the best opponent of oppression. but here's the thing, those people never leave tumblr, and outside of that context it has, like 'politically correct' become a lazy marker for resentment that other people think treating everyone equally is important.

I can't impute that kind of awareness to them. The whining and the "arguments" are so hyperbolic, so inane, so obviously not true, that I can't believe they "know" much at all. They're not well-meaning people protesting an alarming state of affairs. They're pro/am victims who have discovered a cause, a community, a vocabulary, and an audience. They're never so happy as when they're miserable, and never so hopeful as when luxuriating in despair.

not merely content with the revolutionary step of removing state discrimination against same-sex couples in the legal recognition of marriage, but seeking to use state power to punish anyone who refuses

It's all well and good to pass laws ending discrimination -- of course! But to actually enforce those laws? Sir, you go too far!

Here’s what any traditional Christian business owner or employee with a brain in his or her head must do now: keep your mouth shut. Do not talk to the media. Well, yeah. Especially if you're going to say shit like "We plan to discriminate against gay people."

here’s what any traditional pizza eater with a brain in his or her head must do now: keep your mouth shut.

do not comment on alicublog. you will almost certainly not get a fair shake, and even if you do, it’s not going to matter. the pineapple justice mob will do what it can to destroy you. do not talk to anybody about your thoughts or opinions unless you know you can trust them not to out you...

Fuck Billy Graham indeed. When I was a young sprout in the days before UHF, very couple of months one of the local (i.e., Atlanta) TV stations would preempt prime-time programming for another fucking Billy Graham "Crusade." And to preadolescents and other stupid people that shit really was charismatic. Talk about your indoctrination. Jesus.

The "icky" thing is a point that seems to not get made enough. I don't even believe these are religious beliefs, sincerely held or otherwise. They just think gay = icky, but they hide their simple bigotry behind one line in the bible to cover it up. This law was intended to give them additional cover. There's no religious freedom issue.

I had no idea who it was, but it started on borderline paranoia and went from there. There was a lady who was clearly the liberal advocate just pointed out the (damn near innumerable) inconsistencies, while Ed talks about 'You can't make a delicatessen serve a pork plate! Haha gotcha there!" (again, honest to God that was his real true point). Ron Elving and Garrett Epps were there as well, and after their initial flummoxing (Do what? came in over the radio), pointed out that Ed was stuffed absolutely full of wild blueberry muffins.

I found out afterwards, when I went, whoin the hell was that rhetorical cancer on the body politic. 'Edward Whelan'...no click there... 'Of the National Review Online law review'. Much sweet laughter ensuded.

Diane had to kill the damn mike, as in 'cutting to commerical' kill the damn mike, because when he finally got the floor he was damned if he was going to let go of it.

Oh, so now they are worried about people being shunned, humiliated, attacked, or losing their livelihoods? What evil is next? Gay Bakers and Photographers refusing to "lend" their services to Christian Weddings? No more Queer Eye for the Catholic Guy?

A Republican newsletter in Bonneville County, Idaho warned that Muslims were "infiltrating" the state and urged readers to put pressure on law enforcement to investigate Muslims, the Idaho Statesman newspaper reported on Thursday.

This is actually an argument I nearly had, except i gave up, with the asshole over at Mollie Hemingway's piece. Because not understanding how laws are actually written he thought it was a point in the law's favor that it didn't specifically mention gay people or weddings--therefore, he thought, you couldn't locate the bigotry anywhere so it couldn't be shown to exist. I just didn't have time to dig up and review any of the Con Law I had a thousand years ago, or the anthropology of law, on the subject of the writing of laws, laws that forbid or laws that permit, or how not limiting a law like this to a specific named, behavior makes it more dangerous not less. Because,honestly, I knew he was both too stupid and too evil to understand.

These days I just feel sorry for Treacher. A while back he posted a real cri du coeur on Twitter that made it clear how his aimless, vicious trolling is rooted in a deep unhappiness and anger with how his life has turned out. He is personally angry at liberals, who he sees as smug, vicious snakes, and will do anything in his power to lash out at them. He's suffered a pretty clear decline over the years, from Limbaugh-esque 'happy prankster' to Breitbart-esque mess.

We shall fight them in the bakeries, We shall fight in the Florists' stores, we shall fight in the pizza parlors and on Twitter, we will never allow a gay to cram a food or flower order down our throats!

This may not be the America the gay rights movement and its allies, especially in the media, wanted. But this is the America they have created. What?

They're so mad that the gays are fighting back, and winning! They've had such success nibbling and grinding away women's abortion rights, they think their sly wiles will work on everyone; but they haven't managed to confuse & divide gays the way they've divided women. I hope the women's movement will watch the gay rights movement closely, cause their strategy is a good one.

Oh, they have amusing last resort "arguments" from birth rates and 'genetics' that their side will win. Apparently religiosity is "heritable". Why this "heritability" has seemingly changed from 90% to 50% and perhaps now down to 30% of the next generation turning religious across a single century presents a certain difficulty to the theory. if not, they want to outbreed the unbelievers anyway. They hate Eugenics and yet would love to practice it themselves. Though that seems to some of us obvious dysgenics.

Rod of the Drehers is about to write his next book about his previous vaporware concept, the "Benedict Option". From being a long time train wreck watcher, aka reader of his blog, I can easily predict what's in it. It's his attempt to complement Douthat's "Bad Religion", which basically suggests that conservative American Christians resort to recapitulating the Communist strategy of seemingly benign public propaganda organizations and public charity to recruit followers. With an internal cell structure to do the dirty work of undermining the secularist order by generating stealth political candidates and parties, propaganda and art and such, intensifying the contradictions, and hanging in there until the Glorious Reconversion. Being a Catholic he doesn't have to hint at what the best equivalents to the ComIntern and Kremlin will be. (If you enjoy annoying triumphalist Christians online, ask them why Christianity is geographically recapitulating the 1970s state of Communism- collapsing in Western Europe, championed but in deep trouble in much of Eastern Europe, dominant but tenuous in China, spreading in Southeast Asia and Africa....)

Rod's part is going to be about small bore strategy- how to keep your family and friends/congregation indoctrinated while retaining some 21st century social competences. This will involve long visits at all-male monasteries in rural Italy, villages in rural Oklahoma and Alaska, and long point-missing ruminations about the Chasids, Brahmans, Tibetan Buddhism, Shakers, Jews generally, the Internet, and oral traditions. (He's never understood Quakers, and never will, who invented and have long employed the wheel he thinks he's inventing.) Also, about taking long vacations engaged in foodie tourism spiritual retreats while doing your worldly business and getting remuneration in New York City and Paris if at all possible. He used to give talks on the Orthodox Church lecture circuit entitled "How To Keep Your House A Monastery". (I pity his children.) In short, the usual clusterfuck posing as a book of advice.

But yes, Rod and his crowd are basically and painfully the type Eric Hoffer calls 'the fanatics' in "The True Believer". Hoffer's fanatic cannot be convinced, he can only be converted from championing one doctrine he doesn't quite understand which has failed to championing another doctrine he can't quite understand which is not failing yet. Because in the end, it's all about denial and escapism from unwanted Self. And the worthlessness of the present relative to some desired future. In Rod's case, his current book is precisely that. As is his religion. It's cruel how well Hoffer understood and described his type.